Peer-to-Peer Mental Health Supports
Peer–to–Peer Mental Health Supports
The Children’s Partnership (TCP) is excited to announce a new partnership with the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) to administer a historic investment in youth mental health and well-being through a $10 million effort to support eight high schools as pilot sites in California for a student peer–to–peer program. This new investment in peer support was championed by exceptional youth leaders at the California Children’s Trust, Sriya Chilla and Nghia Do, together with Assemblymember Joaquin Arambula, Chair of the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Health and Human Services, and is a direct recommendation from our own youth policy council, The Hope, Healing and Health Collective.
Peer support is an essential evidence-based strategy for supporting young people’s mental health. Youth from H3C shared that greater investments in peer–to–peer programs would improve the opportunities for youth of color to connect and heal with members of their own communities and identities. Building on strategies laid out in our Advancing School-Based Mental Health policy brief, TCP looks forward to working with the eight pilot sites and partners across the state to ensure peer support programs are responsive to the needs of youth in those communities and connect to the broader ecosystem of resources and assets in order to inform a set of recommendations for a model statewide youth peer–to–peer strategy.
We invite you to help inform the development of this exciting pilot program! Please contact our Policy Director of Mental Health, Angela M. Vázquez, MSW, at avazquez@childrenspartnership.
